The power of literature, which had temporarily deserted Mr Hilbery, now came back to him, pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm, and providing a form into which such passions as he had felt so painfully the night before could be moulded so that they fell roundly from the tongue in shapely phrases, hurting nobody.
Arsibalt was horrified. “But how can you not be fascinated by —”“I am fascinated,” I insisted. “That’s the problem. I am suffering from fascination burnout. Of all the things that are fascinating, I have to choose just one or two.”
We were especially pleased when we found a recording . . . where the words themselves were happy, but the interpretation was pure heartbreak.